Search form

News

DESAG National Council Calls on Vice-Chancellor

The National Council of the Distance Students’ Association of Ghana (DESAG) has paid a courtesy call on the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Joseph Ghartey Ampiah, at the Council Chamber, South Campus.

Led by the National President, George Amenyo, the visit was to interact with the Vice-Chancellor and also introduce members of the Council. The National Council of DESAG comprises National Executives and Regional Presidents.

Speaking at the meeting, Mr. Amenyo on behalf of the Council commended the Vice-Chancellor and Management of the University for recognising DESAG and also given the association opportunity to be part of decision-making. He said DESAG would continue to engage Management through dialogue to address concerns of its members. “As students, we need to use the laid down communication channels to seek amicable solutions to our grievances and we are also willing to learn from your rich leadership experiences,” he noted.

Mr. Amenyo used the opportunity to bring to the attention of the Vice-Chancellor one major challenge Distance Students were facing. He said most of the students have complained bitterly about the Student Information System (UCOSIS) which according to him was causing a lot of inconveniences to them. “Some of our students do not see their results when they check from the UCOSIS,” he indicated. He appealed to the Vice-Chancellor to intervene and resolve the issue since most of the Distance Students were mounting pressure on the executives.

On his part, the Vice-Chancellor thanked DESAG National Council for the visit and indicated that management would continue to improve on the services of the College of Distance Education to make the stress students sometimes go through a thing of the past.. He said the Distance Students were encountering challenges with the UCOSIS because they were migrated unto the platform during the 2017/2018 academic year. “I am told some of your people were not properly registered and this has also contributing to the problem you are facing” he explained.

Prof. Ampiah informed them that UCC has been operating the UCOSIS for 18 years and therefore, the Directorate of Academic Affairs (DAA) and Directorate of Information Communications and Technology Services (DICTS) would resolve the problems very soon. “I will ask them to put a team together so that they can come over to your centres to address your concerns with the UCOSIS,” he assured them.

The Vice-Chancellor announced the restructuring of CoDE, saying, “we will soon phase out all the current programmes and introduce the same programmes that the regular students are doing on distance”. He said a Restructuring Implementation Committee had been inaugurated to start the process. He further explained that “we will improve the system by integrating ICT into distance education and creating virtual classrooms so that the face-to-face contacts will be reduced to the barest minimum”.

With the restructuring in place, the Vice-Chancellor said Distance Students would get the opportunity to pursue any programme of their choice since most of the programmes on the regular mode would be mounted on the distance mode. He stated that the new arrangement meant that students on the distance programmes would access lessons through their smart phones or computer laptops. “If we give ourselves within a year, we should see a drastic improvement of our distance programme,” he averred.

Prof. Ampiah thanked the DESAG President assured the other members of the Council that Management would continue to interact with them to provide excellent services to Distance Students.